Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, liberal, bimonthly magazine that specializes in investigative reporting.

Mother Jones was founded in 1976 and is based in San Francisco. In 2008, the magazine opened a Washington bureau with seven staff members. The bureau had a staff of 16 as of 2014, while the entire magazine had a staff of about 80.

Mother Jones’ circulation increased sharply in the early 2000s, though it has dipped slightly during the Obama administration. The magazine says total circulation is 215,000, about three-quarters of which are paid subscriptions.

In 2010, Mother Jones launched The Climate Desk, a collaborative initiative covering climate change, which it spearheaded. The project includes The Atlantic, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Grist, Slate, Wired, and PBS’ Need to Know. Mother Jones is also a founding member of the Media Consortium, a group of liberal publications that launched in 2006, also creating an advertising network.

The magazine reported record-breaking web traffic in February 2011, a 420 percent increase from the year before. Mother Jones attributed its growth in part to an expanded focus on explainers, which bring context to big news stories, as well as to rapid growth in social media. Its digital ad sales also rose 97 percent in the first of half of 2011 over the previous year. It doubled its previous record high traffic number in September 2012, when it posted a video of presidential candidate Mitt Romney making controversial comments about American who didn’t pay federal income tax. Its traffic continued to rise to new highs in 2014, thanks to continued work in drawing traffic from social media.

The Guardian is a foundation-owned national British newspaper known for its global reach and liberal editorial stance. The Guardian was founded in 1821 as the Manchester Guardian (it was moved to London in 1964). In 1936, ownership of the paper was passed on to the Scott Trust, which has pledged to maintain the paper’s independence…

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